Press

Everything needed to cover PlayTales: the facts, boilerplate you can paste straight into a piece, the app icon, the promo graphic and screenshots from iPhone, iPad and CarPlay. All of it is free to use editorially — the terms are further down.

⬇ Download the complete press kit (ZIP)

Contains every icon variant, the promo graphic, all screenshots framed and unframed, and this fact sheet as a text file.

At a glance

Boilerplate

One sentence

PlayTales is an audio play player for children that makes the Apple Music catalogue simple enough for a child to work on their own.

Short — about 50 words

PlayTales hands children the Apple Music catalogue of audio plays in an interface they can work themselves: big covers to tap instead of lists, titles read aloud for anyone who can’t read yet, and a sleep timer that ends the episode on its own. Anything downloaded plays without an internet connection.

Long — about 100 words

PlayTales is an audio play player for children, drawing on the full Apple Music catalogue. In place of lists and menus it shows big, colourful covers a child can tap straight away, and it reads artists and episodes aloud for anyone who can’t read yet. A sleep timer ends the story by itself, and episodes downloaded through Apple Music keep playing with no signal at all — in the car, on the train, on holiday. Favourites and playback positions sync through the family’s own private iCloud. Parents keep the settings behind an arithmetic task small children can’t solve. PlayTales was written by Peter Kurzok, a father of three, originally for his own family.

New in version 1.5.0

• Listen offline — without an internet connection PlayTales shows and plays only the stories Apple Music has already downloaded to the device. What isn’t there isn’t offered: for a child, an album that is tapped and then stays silent is the worse experience.
• Sleep timer — from five minutes to an hour, or until the end of the current episode.
• At the end of the story — stop, repeat the episode, or carry on with the artist’s next album.
• Play it with Siri — “Play … in PlayTales”, and as a Shortcut too.
• Right in Spotlight — favourites and recently played turn up directly in search (iOS 18 and later).
• Progress across the whole story — the slider can span the entire album rather than a single track.
• In sync on every device — favourites and playback positions travel through your private iCloud.

Features

• Access to the full Apple Music catalogue of audio plays, audiobooks and music
• Big covers instead of lists — tile view or Cover Flow
• Artist and episode titles read aloud, for children who can’t read yet
• Favourites and recently played, with playback positions down to the second
• Sleep timer and offline playback
• CarPlay support
• A parents’ area behind an arithmetic task, including a switch to turn search off
• AirPlay and Bluetooth, dark and light mode, VoiceOver and Dynamic Type

Free versus “PlayTales Pro”: the free version allows three favourites. The one-time in-app purchase lifts that limit, unlocks CarPlay, and narrows the library offline to what can actually play. There is no subscription and no advertising.

App icon

From the left: default, dark variant, tinted variant (both iOS 18), cut out. All 1024 × 1024 px.

Promo graphic

2048 × 1024 px.

Screenshots — iPhone

Framed and captioned, exactly as in the App Store. 1320 × 2868 px.

Screenshots — iPad

2064 × 2752 px.

Unframed screenshots

Plain device captures, with no device frame and no caption — usually the better choice for your own layout.

The iPad versions are in the ZIP as well. CarPlay is 800 × 480 px.

About the developer

👋 Hi, I’m Peter Kurzok!

In my main job I work as a software engineer for an IT service provider and I specialize in iOS apps. In my spare time, I enjoy music and photography and sometimes also create iOS apps 🙈

But most of my time is taken up by my family, more specifically my 3 children. That’s why this app exists. Strictly speaking, we only wrote PlayTales for ourselves. When the requests from other friends with children started to pile up, we decided to publish PlayTales to the App Store.

So, say thank you and have fun using it 😅

Using these assets

The app icon, the promo graphic and the screenshots may be used freely in editorial coverage of PlayTales — print, online, video and social. No need to ask first; a link back is always welcome.

Please don’t: alter, distort or re-colour the icon, and don’t use these assets to advertise a different product.

The screenshots show cover art from third-party audio productions (among them KIDDINX and Paw Patrol). That art belongs to its respective rights holders, comes from the Apple Music catalogue, and appears here only as an example of a real library. It is not part of the app and is not shipped with it. If you would rather not reproduce it, screenshot 02 (Player) or the CarPlay view are the safe choices.

Apple, the Apple logo, Apple Music, CarPlay, iPhone, iPad, iCloud, Siri and Spotlight are trademarks of Apple Inc. PlayTales is an independent project and is not affiliated with Apple Inc.

Review copies and contact

I’m glad to unlock “PlayTales Pro” free of charge for coverage — a short email naming your outlet is enough and a promo code comes back. The same address reaches me for questions, an interview, or background on how the app came about:

playtales@peterkurzok.de